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Comment by oceanplexian | Hacker News Reader

I thought Europeans believed freedom of movement was a human right?

Actually scratch that, it's a human right but not if a virus exists, you have the wrong politics, or movement requires the emission of CO2.

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I’m not against people moving or travelling, just pointing out that the vast majority of people won’t move out of their country, whereas HN audience is more likely to have lived in different countries. I have, will probably move again in my lifetime. But I still don’t believe it’s a human right to move countries at will, nor do I think we should be flying as much as we are, draconian lifetime budgets notwithstanding.

But leave it to HN to read deep enough into a comment to make a straw man.

Hey,

This doesn't ban ships.

Just saying.

Not saying I agree or disagree, but you're acting like limiting air travel would stop travel.

Fossil fuel powered ships are worse, because the carbon emissions of running a hotel at sea are high and ships use very low grade fuel with all sorts of nasty byproducts. And electric or renewable long distance ships run into the exact same problems as electric or renewable planes, namely the poor energy density.

Transatlantic cruises don’t have to be luxurious. If you’re comparing air freight to shipping by sea, it’s very clear ships are far more efficient. We just need to become better at containerising people :)

I mean at minimum you need to run an actual kitchen to feed people for days or weeks at sea.

You mean? Yes. Yes, you'll need to have a crew and you'll need to need to ship the necessities, which eats into the efficiency of this mode of transport. However, a plane will create 40 times more CO2 for the same amount of cargo transported than a ship. I'd say we can figure out how to fit a larger crew and more supplies in that margin.

You vill live in ze pod!

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